Christmas in Santa Fe

As many of you know, I have been ambivalent about New Mexico for the entire time I have lived here. There are many good things about the state and many irritating ones as well. Santa Fe is no exception. In the nearly 1 year that I have lived here, I have come to enjoy greatly the weather and the cultural options and to some extent the music scene. It's nice to live in a walking city too. On the other hand, the class divisions in this city are really amazing and the pretension of many is completely sickening.

However, Santa Fe is definitely the best place I've ever spent a Christmas. I've also spent Christmas in Oregon, Tennessee, and South Korea and in none of those places is there anything remarkable about Christmas, except perhaps for South Korea where it's remarkable that it is even celebrated at all (it seems to be the equivalent of Presidents Day here--no one cares except the Christians and it's just a day off for most people). But in Santa Fe they have all kinds of local traditions that make the holidays a lot of fun. All over New Mexico there is the tradition of lumanarias (I hope I spelled that right), which are candles in paper bags that line a sidewalk or building roof or something like that. Santa Fe also has its own traditions. Last night we went and watched the staff from one of the hotels do ice sculptures of Christmas themes, which I had never seen done before. The Palace of the Governors, which was the old Spanish governing building and is now a museum, opens it's doors for an open house where you get free cider and get to look at the exhibits for free. And tomorrow we are going up a road with many of the galleries which is lined with lumanarias and bonfires and many of the galleries will be open as well. Plus the plaza, which is a nice feature of Spanish architecture, is covered in lights and is a really nice place to walk around in.

So all in all, if you get a chance to spend a Christmas in Santa Fe, do it. It's really great.

UPDATE: 12/25/04. Last night's walk on Canyon Road, where all the art galleries are, really sums up my ambivalence about this town. It was truly beautiful with lights and lumanirias and tons of people and it was a lot of fun. But the art galleries, a center of extreme wealth in a very poor state, decided to charge $3 for a cup of hot chocolate when it was very cold out (it got down to 0 the night before last). Unlike every other event in town, the warm drinks had a price when it was the richest who offered them.